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Home > Archive > General Discussion > July 2003 > Lawyers against Linux
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Lawyers against Linux
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| ANDRONDA 2003-07-22, 2:15 pm |
| Appeared on:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2...x/index_np.html
Lawyers against Linux
June 3, 2003 | If you ask Chris Sontag, a vice president at the SCO Group, how his tiny software firm decided to launch a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM and became, in the process, the most reviled name in the open-source programming world, he'll tell you that the whole thing started rather innocently. Sontag says that SCO did not go looking for trouble with fans of free software; instead, trouble found SCO. In January the company, which makes most of its money from the sale of Unix and Linux operating system software, embarked on a routine review of its business holdings. And during the review, "we identified some concerns we had in terms of our intellectual property."
Specifically, the company determined that some source code in Linux had a lot in common with code in Unix -- and SCO says that in 1995, it purchased rights to all the original Unix source code from the software firm Novell. In other words, SCO believes that Linux, an OS that can be freely copied and modified by anyone, is illegal. Linux is, SCO says, "an unauthorized derivative of Unix." If SCO's accusations are affirmed in court, the millions of companies and individual users who have increasingly built their lives around Linux over the last decade might have to start scrambling for an alternative or face costly penalties.
But that was not all. During its examination of Linux source code, SCO says it found that it could trace what it believes was Unix code in Linux to one of its longtime partners in the Unix business: IBM. Sontag says that SCO immediately tried to notify IBM of copyright violations in Linux, but "we effectively got no response." So on March 7, SCO filed suit against IBM, alleging "misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract." In its complaint, SCO claims that IBM took parts of SCO's Unix code and illegally inserted the code into Linux. Last month, to warn end users about its findings, SCO sent about 1,500 corporate Linux customers a letter saying they could be in legal hot water if they continued to use Linux, which SCO told them was "developed by improper use of proprietary methods and concepts." | |
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| hahahaha .... quote:
Sontag says that SCO did not go looking for trouble with fans of free software
pure and totally bullsheeiit. I would bet that this prick or one of his people had ideas about the source code prior to their purchasing the rights to unix from novell.
I take this as just another opportunist trying to make a quick buck - much like that guy claiming the rights to all ebusiness ... load of crap | |
| Tarzanboy 2003-07-22, 8:40 pm |
| quote:
Originally posted by ANDRONDA
Appeared on:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2...x/index_np.html
Lawyers against Linux
June 3, 2003 |Blah blah blah blah blah...
Blah blah blah... If SCO's accusations are affirmed in court, the millions of companies and individual users who have increasingly built their lives around Linux over the last decade might have to start scrambling for an alternative or face costly penalties.
If this was Pokemon, is this the part where you play your BSD card?
Cheers,
TB |
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